Deduplication refers to the process of eliminating duplicate data objects from a storage volume. A storage volume may only require one instance of a data object to be stored; additional instances of the data object may be replaced with a pointer to the original data object. By eliminating redundant data objects and referencing only the original object, immediate benefits may be obtained through storage space efficiencies. However, deduplication operations may be ineffective on read-only storage volumes, such as some backup volumes, because the duplicate data can not be removed from read-only storage volumes. Thus, if a backup volume is created from a storage volume containing duplicate data, the duplicate data may be “locked” in the backup volume. Furthermore, if a snapshot operation begins while a deduplication operation is occurring, temporary metadata used by the deduplication operation may be locked in the snapshot volume.
In order to ensure duplicate data is not locked in a backup of a storage volume, the storage volume should be deduplicated immediately prior to creating the backup. Backup operations of a storage volume are often scheduled to occur at periodic intervals. The scheduled start time of each backup operation may be controlled by service level agreements, or other regulations, which may stipulate that the scheduled backups not be delayed. In these cases, a backup operation on a storage volume can not be delayed to allow a deduplication operation on the storage volume to complete. If a deduplication operation is not complete prior to the scheduled start time of a backup, any duplicate data on the storage volume will be locked in the backup. Therefore, deduplication operations are often scheduled to occur at regular intervals offset from the periodic backups. However, the time interval required for a deduplication operation may vary greatly depending upon the amount of data that needs to be deduplicated. The variance in time required for each deduplication operation renders deduplication operations scheduled at regular intervals largely ineffective. The deduplication operations may not always complete prior to the start of the next scheduled backup, resulting in any duplicate data being locked in the backup. Thus, there may be a need for coordinating deduplication and backup operations of a storage volume to ensure duplicate data is not stored in the periodic backups of the storage volume.